Lesser Characters in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
This page is for detailing information for the lesser characters of the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni series. As pages on lesser characters are being deleted, please move information here. Went from the order of release to later chronological order. Relatively newer releases have some new arcs placed between older arcs. Arcs: first appears in ''Tatarigoroshi-hen *Hōjō Satoko and Satoshi's Parents (''anime) *Journalist ''Someutsushi-hen *Hatakeyama Kazuma *Yamase Kazuko Himatsubushi-hen *Sonozaki Shōhei Kagebōshi-hen *Obata Kiyoshi *Yamashina Mamoru Tsumihoroboshi-hen *Akihito Yoigoshi-hen *Akutagawa *Chiaki *Kurosawa Takumi *Machi *Mifune Matsuribayashi-hen *Hōjō Satoko and Satoshi's Parents *Orphanage Staff *Real Estate Agent A Akihito Akihito '' (アキヒト) is the man Rena's mother left her husband to be with. Rena first met him at an amusement park her mother took her to, and she introduced him as a friend from work. At first, Rena got along well with Akihito and had fun whenever her mother took her out to see him. However, when her mother eventually revealed the reason she was seeing Akihito and wanted to marry him was that she was pregnant with his child, Rena's trigger for the Hinamizawa Syndrome was set off and her father was devastated. Rena considered it her own fault for not rejecting Akihito from the moment they met. After the divorce, Rena broke all of her mother's possessions and vowed to never have anything to do with her or Akihito again. She has never seen or heard from them since. Akutagawa In June 2006, ''Akutagawa (芥川) drove to the ghost village of Hinamizawa with three other people in a carbon monoxide suicide party. His reasons for ending his life is unknown, but it is hinted to be touching and tragic. On the way to the village, he recollected on the events of the Great Hinamizawa Disaster that occurred 23 years before. C Chiaki Chiaki (千秋) took part in a carbon monoxide suicide party in the ghost village of Hinamizawa in late June 2006. Her reasons for ending her life are unknown, but it is hinted to involve the death of her husband. The husband left Chiaki with huge amount of money that he had earned with the success of his business, and she intended to "bring it to him" once she was dead. Otobe Akira, who also took part in the suicide, intended to die due to his life of debt. However, he decides to keep his life, and steal Chiaki's cash card once everyone else was done passing around sleeping pills. Otobe later regrets his actions, and returns the money to her body. Then Chiaki's voice speaks to him from beyond the "Land of the Dead", and tells him that she thinks it's okay for him to take her money, if it gave him the will to live again. Otobe refuses, and accepts the hardships of his life, instead of cheating his way through them. Chiaki tells him that she and the rest of the suicide party would have taken the same path Otobe had, if they had faced their struggles with everything they had, and wishes him good luck. H Hatakeyama Kazuma Hatakeyama Kazuma (畠山一馬) is an elderly man hospitalized at the Saeki Hospital's Care and Welfare Center for the Elderly and a former resident of Hinamizawa. He is first mentioned in Someutsushi-hen as an unsociable old man who was admitted to the center recently. Kimiyoshi Natsumi encounters him during her part-time job at the facility and becomes acquainted with him once they both learn about their shared Hinamizawan heritage. Natsumi encourages Hatakeyama to come out of his shell, socialize, and also look forward to recovering and going home to his family. After the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, Hatakeyama's mental health deteriorates and his nearly delirious worship of Oyashiro-sama becomes a menace to the hospital. He later comes down with a fever after forcefully being interrogated by Detective Minai Tomoe and is scheduled to be transferred to a psychiatric ward. He becomes one of the triggers for the events of Someutsushi-hen as his murder of his caretaker, Yamase Kazuko and eventual suicide become one of the stressors Natsumi faces in this arc. In Kagebōshi-hen, ''he doesn't play a very significant role in the main story as he did in ''Someutsushi-hen, ''having been sent home from the hospital early and it is implied he doesn't meet Natsumi. He however begins to exhibit strange behavior as he does in the previous arc, and begins to fanatically worship Oyashiro-sama after the Great Hinamizawa Disaster. This becomes a big nuisance for his family and a spectacle for the neighbors as observed by Akasaka Mamoru when he visits the Hatakeyama household in this arc. Hatakeyama is later murdered by his neighbor, Obata Kiyoshi—one of his few friends and a former resident of Okinomiya. Hōjō Satoko and Satoshi's Parents Very little is known about them other than their mother married and divorced more than one man. Satoko, in particular, has a difficult time developing a relationship with her stepfathers as her mother repeatedly divorced and married. Their last stepfather led the proponents of the dam project. He and their mother perished in an apparent accident as a scenic viewing point on a cliff over the waters of the major river in Hinamizawa: his body was found, but her body was lost. As such, they were considered cursed by Oyashiro-sama with the husband killed and the mother "demoned away." In the "perfect world" of Saikoroshi-hen, Satoko gives her stepfather a chance, and the two, along with Satoshi, develop a good relationship, avoiding the tragedies that took place in other arcs. J Journalist The journalist is first mentioned in the epilogue of ''Tatarigoroshi-hen. He worked as a reporter for a photography periodical from 1975 to 1989. Eight years after his death; in the late summer of 2003; his parents in Osaka discover a cassette tape amongst his belongings labelled "11-28-1983 Keiichi Maebara." The sensational tape contains an unsettling interview with a mentally disturbed Maebara Keiichi; the sole survivor of the 1983 Great Hinamizawa Disaster. In the recording, the journalist explains various theories regarding how Keiichi had survived the disaster. He argues that it would be impossible for Keiichi to have been unconscious on the river bed and survived since it should have been shrouded by the volcanic gas. Upset with his onslaught of insinuations and patronizing attitude, an enraged Keiichi curses him to drown to death. True to this prediction, he goes missing at sea when his fishing boat capsizes in 1995. He is later mentioned in the DS Port version of Yoigoshi-hen which reveals him to be the estranged father of Arakawa Ryūnosuke. In this arc, Arakawa's grandparents contact him after discovering he was their grandson. He gains possession of the cassette tapes containing interviews with the survivors of the Great Hinamizawa Disaster: Maebara Keiichi and Sonozaki Shion. While Keiichi's tape is unintelligible, Shion's tape is audible. In that tape, the person who is supposed to be Shion is repeatedly coaxed by the journalist into coming up with a realistic explanation for the disaster aside from Oyashiro-sama's curse and this greatly upsets her. Shion curses him to drown to his death and the tape ends with her deranged laughter. Arakawa recalls how these interviews earned his father a bad reputation in his field and subsequently left him mentally drained. The journalist later quit his job and returned to his parent's house in Osaka, only to go missing at sea later on. His research about the Great Hinamizawa Disaster however proves to be useful to Arakawa who later utilizes it to enhance his own career as an occult writer. K Kurosawa Takumi ''Kurosawa Takumi (黒澤 工) is Towada Yae's abusive boyfriend and the first victim in Yoigoshi-hen. Takumi and Yae fell in love during their college years. Takumi was a guitarist at a band he had put together and he often performed at concerts along with his other band members. Yae got to know him after he invited her to his concert and they started dating. Unlike Yae, Takumi was always chasing his unreachable dreams, even after their graduation. Even when most of the other band members had given up on their pusuit of making it big in the music industry and chose stable jobs, Takumi still held on to his hopes and continued to write music. This made his girlfriend's life hard, since she had to pay all their expenses and drowned her hopes of leading a normal domestic life withTakumi. Soon, faced with failure after failure at his attempts in securing a music career, Takumi was overcome with bitterness and stayed mostly at home watching TV or drinking beer and never composed music at all. After a while he started to abuse Yae whenever they ended up arguing, which made Yae feel trapped in their relationship. Eventually, Takumi found a stable job, which he wanted to tell Yae about during their trip in Hinamizawa, before which he is murdered. Takumi is the first dead person in the story to speak, revealing the new aspect of Hinamizawa as being connected to the "land of the dead". When accompanying Yae to their car, he was already dead, appearing to her as a spirit only because of their feelings. At "Mion"'s prompting he tells the group that he regretted how he had treated Yae, and that he had intended to make their trip to Hinamizawa a turning point. He'd decided to give up on his dreams, get a real job and stop making Yae sad because he loved her so. M Machi In June 2006, Machi (マチ) joined a carbon monoxide suicide party in the ghost village of Hinamizawa. Her reasons for dying are unknown, however it is hinted that it involves the deaths of her family. Since the village was called the "land of the dead", she hoped that she would see the ghosts of her dead family members, and is disheartened when they fail to appear. Mifune Mifune (三船) is a character who only appears in Yoigoshi-hen as the antagonist of the arc. Mifune was once a confidant of Sonozaki Akane's husband. Shortly before the events of Yoigoshi-hen, he arranges for her assassination in a bid to take over the Sonozaki House. He and his men pursue "Sonozaki Mion" into the abandoned Hinamizawa village in an attempt to kill her and take the bell for himself, but is ultimately killed by Sonozaki Shion. It is unclear whether or not Mifune had any blood tie to the family, or was simply a powerful member of their organization. O Orphanage Staff Coming Soon... Obata Kiyoshi Obata Kiyoshi (小幡清) is a former resident of Okinomiya and one of Hatakeyama Kazuma's only friends in Kakiuchi City. He is first mentioned in Kagebōshi-hen. Obata had moved to Kakiuchi in 1976 and lived opposite to the Hatakeyama Household. Hence, he hadn't been interrogated by Detective Minai Tomoe and her team as a prospective offender, since he had moved to the city two years prior to the Dam Project's termination, while their list of residents only comprised of those who had moved from Shishibone City after 1978. Obata Kiyoshi is the perpetrator of Hatakeyama Kazuma's murder in Kagebōshi-hen. At 6.00 PM inside his own house on the 1st of July, 1983, Obata is said to have stabbed Hatakeyama multiple times with a kitchen knife for unknown reasons before committing suicide by stabbing his own throat. This murder was highly unanticipated as Obata did not show any signs of suspicious behavior before the incident. It is speculated that their shared Hinamizawan heritage and Hatakeyama's fanatic behavior after the Great Hinamizawa Disaster may have sparked discord between them leading to their eventual demise. R Real Estate Agent He is a real estate agent in Hinamizawa who sells a house to Maebara Ichirō Appearance He has brown eyes and short brown short hair. He wears glasses, a white shirt with a charcoal tie. S Sonozaki Sōhei Sonozaki Sōhei was the leader of the Sonozaki family during World War II and the husband of Sonozaki Oryō. He made a lot of money on the black market by selling canned food which he probably had stolen from a food storage in China where he had been working. He gave this money to his wife Oryō, who rebuilt Hinamizawa, which had been falling apart near the end of the war. But in the late 1950s a bad rumor came up. Sōhei had allegedly belonged to a scientific military unit. By doing research on how to supply the starving Japanese army with food, they reportedly tried to use human bodies for nutritional purposes. Moreover, the rumor blamed Sōhei to have distributed canned human flesh and having become rich by such means. However, he denied this allegation until the day he died. SonozakiSouhei.png|Sōhei's manga illustration by Yutori Houjyou sonozakisouhei2.png|Sōhei's manga illustration by Yoshiki Tonogai Y Yamase Kazuko Yamase Kazuko (山瀬加寿子) is a nurse who works at Saeki Hospital and the director of the Care and Welfare Center for the Elderly. She first appears in Someutsushi-hen as a kindhearted, passionate caregiver and a mentor to Kimiyoshi Natsumi as she works part-time at the facility. Yamase is described as a gentle woman slightly older than Natsumi's mother, who always looks out for Natsumi and appreciates her sincere efforts. When Detective Minai Tomoe forcefully tries to interrogate Hatakeyama Kazuma; a former resident of Hinamizawa regarding the Gas disaster, Natsumi steps in between them and defends the elderly man. This compassionate move from Natsumi earns Nurse Yamase's admiration and she later urges Natsumi to consider becoming a caregiver after high school. Yamase's compliment greatly touches and encourages Natsumi who was previously distraught regarding her future career prospects. Yamase is later unexpectedly murdered by a mentally unstable Hatakeyama after he develops the terminal symptoms of the Hinamizawa Syndrome. Natsumi hastily uncovers her dead body as the paramedics are carrying it out, and has a nervous breakdown after seeing her disfigured face. Saeki Chisato later recalls how Yamase was an excellent nurse and that the Care and Welfare Center for the Elderly was actually her proposal to the management. Earlier during her career, Yamase was compelled to leave her bedridden father in her son's care, due to her demanding workload. When her aged father had developed a fever, Yamase's son had treated it like a common cold, when it was actually organ failure which later turned out to be fatal for him. Her regret motivated her to realize that the general population which didn't have medical expertise would feel burdened and was incapable of providing adequate care for the ailing elderly. This led to her involvement and passion in establishing the facility at the Saeki Hospital. Yamase Kazuko's murder along with Hatakeyama Kazuma's suicide becomes one of the triggers for the events of Someutsushi-hen as they cause great mental distress to Natsumi who was already facing difficulties on various fronts in this arc. Yamashina Mamoru Yamashina Mamoru (山科守) is Saeki Chisato's friend and upperclassman. His father is Chisato's chauffeur and his mother runs a cafe downtown in Kakiuchi City where a lot of students from their school frequent. He is first seen in Kagebōshi-hen when Chisato visits his family cafe with Kimiyoshi Natsumi and Makimura Tamako. Mamoru is a no-nonsense pragmatic young man who often helps Chisato out when she is emotionally distressed or confused. He's close to Chisato due to their family ties and being from the same school. Tamako, being Chisato's childhood friend, is well acquainted with him too. Mamoru is revealed to be the one to point out that Natsumi's hometown Okinomiya is actually a neighboring town next to the village of Hinamizawa, where the gas disaster took place. He knows this as he reveals he often visits the home branch of Angel Mort in Okinomiya. Mamoru is considerate and practical and is shown to care a great deal about Chisato. He often teases her for her rampant behavior but also gives her valuable advice regarding academics and cheers her up when she is feeling upset about Natsumi. Chisato looks up to him as an "older brother" figure and sometimes shows him her weak side, unlike how she acts around her other friends. Mamoru often calls Chisato "my lady" due to his father being her family's employee, although she resents it and prefers he acts more familiar with her. It is revealed that Mamoru has feelings for Chisato and has once confessed to her in the past, only to be rejected. Yet, he believes he still has a chance as Chisato continues to be close to him and often visits his shop. Chisato had once told him "Everyone loves people who are self-confident", which inspired him to cultivate confidence. Chisato notices that he has made significant improvement in that area since, and it is implied that she may also have some feelings for him too but decides not to act on them. Chisato feels she cannot fall in love with Mamoru until they become equals someday, as opposed to how Mamoru was currently the more emotionally mature person in their relationship. Category:Characters Category:Males Category:Females Category:Articles in need of cleanup Category:Children Category:Teenagers Category:Adults Category:Elderly